Category: Directed by Greg Daniels

Upload (2020) s01e02 – Five Stars

The best part about “Upload” this episode is Cigarette Smoking Man William B. Davis as one of the “Choak” brothers, who has died and is now living his reward after ruining American society for decades. Because Davis is good. No qualifications, no asterisks, he’s just good.

Everything else in “Upload” comes with a caveat. Even, sort of, Allegra Edwards.

Edwards is lead Robbie Amell’s girlfriend. He’s dead and in “Upload”—you have your mind put on computer and then you exist forever in an app but capitalism so everything costs money–she’s his evil rich White woman fiancée. Basically Edwards needs to be Portia de Rossi in “Arrested Development” in 2003 for it to work and it’s not 2003 and Edwards isn’t de Rossi. And “Upload” isn’t “Arrested Development.”

So while Edwards is bad, the part is thin. So a caveat. Would Edwards be good if the part were good? Doesn’t seem like it. She’s a charisma vacuum.

As opposed to Andy Allo, who plays Amell’s “angel,” the customer service rep who waits on him hand and foot—digitally—and tries to sell him virtual goods as he goes through the iAfterlife. Allo’s full of charisma. Even more than Amell, which is something since the whole show is sold on the idea he’s charming.

He’s just a little much of a tech frat bro. To the point episode writer and director and show creator Greg Daniels gives Amell’s character thin backstory but taking up the amount of time real backstory would’ve taken. Is it intentionally shallow?

Maybe?

The stuff with Allo’s dating life, which is entirely sexual encounter and app-based—complete with a rating system (the episode title refers to Allo’s pursuit of better ratings as a customer service rep from her virtual charges)—is apparently the only way the not White people can have human connection while White people like Amell and Edwards live in a CW nighttime soap opera. It’s not entirely class and wealth-based—Amell’s supposed to have working class origins so as to clash with Edwards because “Upload” is often very lazy—but it does seem to be race-related. At least in the optics.

But whatever.

It’s also not worth thinking about too hard. No one else did. You’re just supposed to stan Allo and Amell and Allo and Amell make it easy to comply.

Upload (2020) s01e01 – Welcome to Upload

“Upload” takes place in a mundane future dystopia where Bloomingdales runs liquor stores and Panera Bread was able to acquire Facebook. The most oddly prescient bit has a bunch of people on the packed commuter train wearing masks. Worker drones take the train it seems like. The middle class and above have self-driving cars, which are apparently super safe.

Or at least after Robbie Amell dies in a self-driving car accident, everyone is surprised because they’re supposed to be so safe.

Amell’s not dead dead, however, because in this future you get to live as long as the company who provides your digital afterlife can keep the servers running. Amell and pal Jordan Johnson-Hinds are trying to design a freeware version and they’re almost done but then he oddly and tragically dies.

Also wouldn’t you know he’s dating a woman who’s an heiress to the biggest in-app purchase version of the afterlife? So much intrigue.

The show doesn’t do well with the intrigue. It does a lot better with Amell bonding with his handler, Andy Allo; Allo’s job is to make sure Amell doesn’t reject his new reality and go jump into a giant data stream and incinerate himself or something. It also doesn’t make sense why they couldn’t re-upload him; though that one is so obvious they’re going to have to address it.

This first episode is overlong—it’s going to be a half hour or so but they stretch the pilot out to forty minutes, which seems like a perfectly good half hour pilot bulked out with the suspicious girlfriend (Allegra Edwards’s obnoxious) and the intrigue.

There are some good laughs—a lot of them considering the protagonist is dead—and pretty much everyone but Edwards is fine. Allo’s better than Amell but they’re both more likable than good. Kevin Bigley’s solid as Amell’s first fellow dead guy friend (Bigley killed himself after losing his legs in the Iran War, so “Upload”’s full of optimism for American Imperialism).

It’ll be interesting to see if the show can maintain so much product placement—you can buy all the soda brands and all the fast food in the afterlife. But not Amell because Edwards controls his in-app purchases and stalks him from the real world.

There are some weird jokes—Amell asking Allo if there’s slavery in Heaven, which writer, director, and show creator Greg Daniels doesn’t seem to know how to execute (or does and it just doesn’t fly)—but the bit about men in the afterlife being able to pee in the urinal from across the room in a steady, infinite stream is… accurate. You know the dude programmers would add that feature.

I’m far from sold on the first one but hopefully the issues are just pilot flitters.